Again, some thoughts on waiting. I know it’s not Advent, but we can still consider it, briefly.
I’ve been doing some work this year with Tolkien’s work and, in searching for something else from the Return of the King, stumbled across and re-read a brief scene (another cut from the films) between the Battle of Minas Tirith and the advance of the captains of the West to the gates of Mordor. Aragorn does not enter the city with pomp. He does not rest in the capitol that, by rights, is his lawful possession. He has not been formally welcomed as King and the Steward is lying wounded in the Houses of Healing. Aragorn declares, instead, “I will not enter in, nor make any claim, until it be seen whether we or Mordor shall prevail. Men shall pitch my tents upon the field, and here I will await the welcome of the Lord of the City” (843).
Eomer (a friend, compatriot, and heir of an allied kingdom) with a sense of offense for Aragorn’s honor declares, “[…] Will you suffer these [banners and tokens] to be challenged?” —meaning the banners and tokens of Aragorn’s kingship (ROTK 843). You see, Eomer perceives, wrongly, that waiting is a form of submission. He thinks that Aragorn waiting suggests a wound, an offense, a slight, a dishonor.
Many commentators on the Gospels seem to feel the same way about Christ in all of those moments in which he seeks to keep his identity a secret. Yunno, those strange “don’t tell anyone” moments (e.g. Mk. 1.43-45 and Mk. 8.29-30)? Why, we ask like Eomer, would Jesus do that? It seems either weak, wrong-headed, or suspicious. Why would kings wait?
In Aragorn’s case it is for the greater unity of his people: “…I deem the time unripe; and I have no mind for strife except with our Enemy and his servants” (ROTK 843). Aragorn does in fact enter the city under the cover of darkness and in the clothes of a ranger (not the clothes of a king) in order to work the great healing that, in Gondor at least, is reserved for the hands of the King. He spends all night healing and mending the ill and infirm.
Aragorn reveals himself first as servant, and then lays his claim as king. Not because he is uncertain of who he is, nor because he is working some publicity angle, but because sheer power, sheer authority, matters little to him. Sheer authority, power for power’s sake is precisely what Sauron and the One Ring represent. Aragorn has come to be a certain kind of king, and to exercise a certain quality of power. And quality is something that takes time.
So also, our rushing modernity which dashes madcap to power and achievement gapes in puzzlement at Our Lord who waits to reveal himself, to reveals himself first as Servant and then as King. With the same confusion we wonder about that 2nd Day between Friday and Sunday. Why did Jesus take so long in the grave? We wonder also about why Jesus came after so long a interval between the Fall of Genesis 3 and the moment of his advent. If he was going to wait that long, why not just wait for Guttenberg? Would have saved the monks a lot of vellum!
Our impatience indicts us. We care little for “the fullness of time” —which is to say “eternity”. And the constant stopping-to-rest of the Lord of the Sabbath frustrates us. Our haste makes bad kings of us.
It is precisely in the waiting, in the meekness of patience, that true nobility is revealed. That Aragorn doesn’t have to claim his city, suggests a far more secure and legitimately powerful ruler than the one who is forced by their own need to make sure everyone reckons them rightly to lay ahold to unripe fruit. Moreover the exhaustion that comes from pre-ripe plucking typically results in the kind of fatigue that forfeits the very thing we sought to claim, like water from a seizing fist. Ironically waiting for ripeness actually makes us better people of action than not waiting —just think how forceful and decisive Christ is in the Gospels!
Lent demands that we wait. And in that waiting encounter the God of the here-and-now who works and waits in the fullness of time. This is no idle waiting. It is the careful delight of watching for the blossoming fruition; for the mellowing of the berry, the reddening of the plum, the swelling of the sap.
Aragorn is welcomed to his city, Christ is hailed as King of the Jews in the language of the Empire in a plaque above his crown, and sugar drops into the body of the grape.